Twelve hours
by Alternatively
Summary: An alternative lycanthropy explanation, and an arbitrary excuse for a snuggle. A tentative beginning for Lupin-and-Tonks.


It was nearly half-two in the morning when they finally got to the safe house. One of Moody's off-the-record, strange little boltholes. Functional, but not exactly elegant. A muggle studio apartment over the top of a fish and chip shop in a tiny little town with nothing to recommend it aside from exceptionally bad weather.

They had spent a futile and stressful night tailing Torquil Cadwallader. Moonless, in the cold and the pouring rain, sneaking carefully around on the slippery rocks in the bay, wading in the shallow water to get to the little cave, loitering, thigh deep, with the waves shoving them against the rockface, and the wind and the rushing of the sea making the extendable ears almost useless…

They were wet-through, cold-through, strung-out on nervous energy, and utterly defeated. Too tired even to apparate.

Turned out Cadwallader was just smuggling pixieweed and snort o' the dragon. No evidence he was a Death Eater. Didn't mean he wasn't. Just meant they'd spent the night slowly turning wrinkly and blue for absolutely no good reason whatsoever.

The apartment had been repeatedly painted beige, so the paint looked thick and old. The kitchenette had horrible maroon laminate top; there was a single, rickety chair; a little gas heater; and a queen-sized bed with thin-but-clean sheets and a motheaten pile of woollen blankets that had once been blue but were now a faded grey.

There was no sofa. No camp bed. No alternative other than the floor.

Remus reminded himself that he had slept in worse conditions than these; at least he could shower in the tiny bathroom and dry his clothes first.

Tonks had finished double and triple checking the protections- they'd given up on Cadwallader and had been heading back down the beach and into the town when he'd smelt the pack, and they'd smelt him, and then it was cat and mouse, and a desperate icy game of hide and seek and misdirection and gripping, paralysing, desperate fear that they'd catch Tonks and- he couldn't even think it, and now they were here, and they were safe, and even if the pack was still out there, they couldn't get in, and the bent spoon on the bench was the emergency portkey, booked for tomorrow morning, at ten, and all they had to do was sit tight, and wait, and then they would vanish from Chipping-on-Sea as though they'd never been there at all.

Tonks was stripping off her coat, and kicking off her boots, and peeling off her jumper, but she paused, and peered at him.

"Remus! Quit dripping all over the lino! You'll freeze,"

"Hmm? Oh, yes, of course," He extracted himself awkwardly from his coat and looked about vacantly for somewhere to hang it.

His jaw hurt from the cold, and so did his joints, and his whole body was humming with left over panic, and he wasn't sure she completely understood what they had just escaped.

She pulled the coat from his hands and dumped it on the lino. He felt a tug of resistance- it was his only coat and there she was tossing it on the floor- when she started winching her way out of her sodden trousers. He felt distinctly peculiar, like he was going insane and dreaming, and the dream was a sort of nightmare-gone-wrong, if nightmares could _go_ wrong-

She made an exasperated noise at him, dropping her trousers onto the wet pile of clothing, and grabbing the bottom edge of his jumper-

"Uh-"

"_All_ the warming charms have faded, we've been out way too long, you have no body fat to speak of, and you seem to be too freaked out to do this yourself,"

"Oh," he let her help him out of the woollen jumper, surprised at how heavy it was, and the whole thing was fine- until she started unbuckling his belt.

It was a strange moment, but it passed, and she was standing there in dark purple pants and a lime green croptop, looking damp and chilled, and goosepimpled, with her lips blue and her hair wet to her head, and he was there in his pants and vest, and soggy socks, because he hadn't removed them when he'd dragged his boots off, and so he took them off and she vanished into the bathroom and he heard the taps turn on and thought that he would have to try another warming charm, even though after the third in a row they stop being effective, and they were well past that…

She came back out, grabbed him by the elbow and pulled him into bathroom and into the shower stall.

She'd barely put the hot water on at all, but it was stinging pain on his cold skin.

She huddled close to him and they stood in the rush of burning luke-warm water in silence.

"It doesn't feel so bad now. Ok if I turn it up?"

He nodded, and the water grew warmer, pain receding.

He stood and stared at her face, the changing micro expressions, the movement. The way she bit her lip, glanced around, shifted to make sure they were both evenly defrosting in the warm stream of water, blinking, wiping her eyes, pushing her hair back…

She turned the heat up another notch, and it seemed like everything would be ok. They were warming up.

"You want to tell me why being chased by werewolves freaks you out more than being chased by Death Eaters?" she asked, folding her arms across her body, and rubbing her arms in the warm water.

There was far too much to put into words.

"No."

The sound of the shower.

Steam.

"Dumbledore wants you to go undercover in the packs, doesn't he,"

It wasn't even really a question.

He didn't bother with a reply.

"Remus,"

She didn't need to know everything. But she should know that even standing next to him on the street put her at risk.

"They're often awful about women." He said bluntly, "And we were clearly wandering about together. And I'm a werewolf. On their turf."

She blinked at him.

"That all?"

He felt sick.

"Oh, don't look so queasy! I'm a metamorphmagus, I'm used to people assuming my body is currency. I have cultivated many, _many_ defences, including, but not limited to, auror training, and the ability to transform certain parts of my anatomy into razor sharp weapons," she bared her teeth at him. "It's a horrible fact of life. But we escaped. And believe me, I would've had no compunction in dealing with them if they'd caught us."

"We can't do this anymore."

"Do what?"

"These missions."

"Why not?"

"Association with me is dangerous."

"Remus," she sounded exasperated again, "I'm fine. You're fine. Sure, it was a bit tense for a while there, but we had the upper hand the whole time. Stop imagining worst-case scenarios."

He didn't mean to, but he met her gaze then.

"Oh shit," she said, and he knew she'd realised that for him, the worst-case scenarios nearly always came true. "Remus, _I'm fine_, and you _really_ need to, uh, start talking, because you _were_ fine, you were brilliant, actually, and we got here, and we're safe, and it's like you've gone straight into shock, and like, that's ok, but we've done loads of jobs together and I've never seen you shut down like this, so like. What gives?"

He stared at the wrinkle of water streaming down her neck. Strands of mulberry hair caught in the flow.

"Remus? What is it?"

He couldn't. He couldn't say anything. The absolute icy fear, the sick relief of safety, the horrifying knowledge that there were people in the world who _wanted_ to do horrible things to her…

"Ok, look. Tell me if I'm wildly off course here, but like. You're a werewolf. And even though you would _never_ do anything to hurt me, we spent half the night evading a werewolf pack that _did _want to hurt me. Are you maybe freaking out because you think _you_ might hurt me, just because of the whole werewolf thing?"

The surge of panic in his chest suggested she was far too close to the truth.

And the truth was horrible.

He had a permanent ache from loving her, and the constant irritation of fancying her, and what if, what if, what if…

_What if he-_

"Woah, ok, hit a nerve there! Look. I'm going to give you a hug, ok, and I promise you're not going to rip my throat out. Guaranteed."

And she put her arms around him, and held him, turning the water up occasionally, just standing and holding him, until the terror beating through his chest slowed, and the feeling returned properly to their fingers and toes.

He felt a bit embarrassed about the whole situation, but once they'd dried off, and dried their clothes, and he'd put his trousers back on- she'd quirked a judgy eyebrow at that, and said 'suit yourself', wandering about in her underwear like it was normal- he'd been able to slip back into polite and distant, and a little humourous, so as not to be unfriendly, and it was all going absolutely fine.

"Yeah, nope." She grabbed the pillow out of his hands and dropped it back onto the bed. "Who is it that you don't trust here, huh? Think I'm going to mount you in the night?"

He frowned.

"Yeah exactly, that's mental. So it's _you_ you don't trust. We're back to the werewolf thing again. So like. Talk. Tell me about it."

He was tongue-tied and horrified, and was part the way through a polite, kindly, distancing sentence, something vaguely jokey about having a bad back and finding the floor more comfortable… when she took him by the elbows and made him sit on the bed beside her.

"Remus, you're not dangerous."

There was nothing really to say to that.

He _was_ dangerous.

"You're not. But you're clearly shit-scared of the wolf. So tell me about it. What's it like at full moon? What's it like the rest of the month? You clearly have a better sense of smell than most wizards, so that's cool. What else?"

_It's not cool, it's creepy. Useful occasionally, but mostly creepy._

"Remus,"

He still couldn't say anything.

She hugged his arm and leaned on him for a bit.

"My hearing is quite good." He said lightly. "I've fairly good stamina over long distances. Other than that there's not much that I've noticed day to day. But at the full moon, the wolf takes over, and that is extremely dangerous."

"Do you have any werewolf friends?"

A difficult question.

"No. Not really. A few acquaintances. I know, when I meet someone, if they are. They know too."

A pause.

"So… is the wolf with you all the time? Is it like a separate consciousness? Or is it like, part of you?"

He turned it over in his mind.

His chest felt like stone.

She'd led him here.

_Fast._

He didn't want to say it out loud.

She squeezed his hand.

"It's me," his own voice sounded broken and raspy, "It doesn't feel like me; it's like… insanity. It's… I'm not a violent person, but… I suppose I must be, deep down."

Silence. But she hadn't let go of his hand. She was still leaning on his arm.

"Do you keep up with the research?" she asked lightly. A loaded question. He waited for her to explain.

"When we met, I did a bunch of extra reading," she fluffed her hair up with her free hand, "There was a paper by a muggleborn researcher who was trying to work out why full moon werewolves display extreme aggression. Muggle research has shown that brain tumours in certain parts of the brain can cause people to become viciously angry and violent, when they were previously calm peaceful people. The paper hypothesised that, like that type of brain tumour, the transformation into wolf form puts pressure on whatever specific part of the brain is responsible for aggression. Wolfsbane is essentially just a sedative; the wolf is drugged to the eyeballs and can only sleep through the night. The researcher couldn't prove anything, not having a werewolf around to monitor; they were just trying to show that muggle knowledge might be helpful in terms of understanding what's going on. Does that feel relevant?"

He had to cover his face with a shaking hand.

Did it feel relevant?

_Yes_.

The wolf never felt like him, it always felt crazed, rage-filled, violent. It didn't feel like a separate consciousness, or like being possessed, or like a disease. It felt like he _became_ this horrible monster, and it wasn't _him_ but it wasn't _not_ him either. In human form, he never felt that way, thought that way, behaved that way…

"The other thing I read was a slightly crackpot theory about the origins of lycanthropy. That one suggested that it was a really early attempt at human-to-animal transfiguration gone wrong. There are far too many similarities to the animagus process to dismiss it out of hand, and also, it just _looks_ like transfig gone wrong. As in, some nutbar in the past was trying to work out how to turn into a wolf, and really stuffed it up," she sounded almost cheerful, "And that's pretty consistent with the idea that there's a bit of brain-skull mismatch and your brain gets squished, and makes you temporarily insane,"

He stared into the middle distance, and he felt hollow.

"Whether it is true or not, all it really means is that I am capable of great violence. I am far too dangerous to be around."

"No, it doesn't. It means that you are _only_ capable of great violence at the full moon. For twelve hours a month, you're a violently insane lunatic. The rest of the time, you're _you._ And you can _trust_ that, Remus. You are not a violent person. You're not even an _angry_ person, which, given all the crap you put up with on a daily basis, is really damn impressive."

A wave of sadness hit him.

He was done. He couldn't talk about it any more. Or hear her talk about it.

It was far too tempting.

He wanted to believe it.

That this was a thing that was done to him. That it _wasn't_ a reflection of the darkest part of his soul, or a sort of peculiar moral failing. That it wasn't natural to transform- it certainly didn't _feel _natural… but if it was transfiguration gone wrong, and it was all just a horrible medical nightmare, something unrelated to his, his _self…_

He got up and went to stand in the kitchenette, staring blankly at his own grey face distorted on the windowpanes against the black night.

He heard the rustling as she slipped between the sheets.

"I don't like violent men," she said on a yawn, "It's one of the reasons I like _you_ so much. So you needn't think I've a weird kink about the lycanthropy," She yawned again, "Please don't sleep on the floor."

He stood for a while, waiting.

He believed it.

He tried not to. But it felt right.

He should read the research first, before buying into the idea. He should check the research, examine the evidence and the arguments…

But it felt right.

He'd already given in to it.

The idea that he was himself, except for one night a month.

He was himself.

And he would _never_ harm her. Not ever. Not as himself.

He turned out the lights, took his trousers off again, and slipped into bed beside her. His bones ached.

"Brilliant, I was starting to get chilly," she murmured, barely giving him time to lie down before she curled herself around him.

"Tonks,"

"You're not old, and I'm on an auror's salary," she yawned again, and nuzzled against his shoulder.

"Sorry?"

"Those are the reasons you haven't asked me out, right? That's what you said to Sirius: too old, too poor, too dangerous?"

He let out a breath.

"He told you?"

She chuckled.

"Nah, I was eavesdropping." She gave him a bit of a squeeze, "Remind me to seduce you sometime when I'm less exhausted…"

He was too startled to reply straight away, and then he realised that she was warm, and trusting, and safe, and that was an argument for another day.

For now, for the first time since he was a child, someone was going to hold him while he fell asleep. It was a gift that he was too tired to resist.

He closed his eyes.


End file.
